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Outside of Geneva and inside Piaget's oddly shaped factory --- vaguely resembling a 1960s sci-fi fantasy of what a 21st-century office building might look like -- a lab-coated craftsman peers intently through a microscope, using, under the magnifiers, tweezers to minutely jiggle and press into place a mosaic of 226 tiny baguette- and brilliant-cut diamonds around a watch's bezel. In another corner of the factory, rattling machinery and goldsmiths treat gold to a series of lapping (a mechanical means of rubbing surfaces with an abrasive), felting, polishing, and buffing procedures so the metal achieves the right patina. Impressive, but, in some ways, the best part of the factory tour occurs at the end, when the guest is walked down a black corridor lined with showcases, behind which sit Piaget watches from the late 1940s to the early 1990s.

The design pinnacles of the 1874-founded Piaget were reached over roughly a decade that spanned the 1960s and 1970s, when Elizabeth Taylor, in her flowing caftans, big hair, and heavy eyeliner promenaded in Portofino, Italy, with Richard Burton and Piaget jewelry on her arms. It was in that jet-set era that the Swiss watchmaker established its essence: wrist-candy that stood ambiguously somewhere between jewelry and watch.

Consider the yellow-gold and red-coral watch pictured below (left). Made in 1974 and boasting an ultrathin mechanical movement, the watch starts with a rectangular dial of red coral mounted on a deceptively simple gold bracelet; it then adds on one side extravagant strands of gold chains pouring forth coral beads, somehow capturing the age of Bob Marley and his dreadlocks. Et voilà. In the end, a conventional Swiss watch winds up resembling a funky and far-out piece of jewelry-sculpture.

From left to right: A women's jewelry-watch of 1974, today's "secret watch," and a cuffwatch.
Courtesy of Piaget

Many of the best Piaget watches of this period matched yellow or white gold with vibrant-colored dials of jade, lapis lazuli, malachite, tiger's-eye, opal, onyx, and turquoise. In 1967, Jackie Kennedy wore an oval-shaped Piaget watch, on a bright and smooth gold bracelet. The dial is surrounded by a diamond-studded bezel, but lush green counterpoints of color are created out of four strategically placed emeralds, and a dial face of the most eye-catching dappled jade.

Anyone who saw Piaget watches of that era was not entirely sure whether she was seeing a piece of jewelry that happened to be a watch, or a watch that happened to be jewelry.

In 1988, the watchmaker was acquired from Yves Piaget by the Rupert family, now famously behind luxury conglomerate Richemont. The Ruperts have managed to keep Piaget close to its essence. The just-released diamond "secret watch" pictured above (middle) is inspired by ribbons and is part of Piaget's "Limelight" collection. At first blush, the work appears to be avant garde jewelry vaguely suggestive of an Egyptian mummy wrapped in diamond bandages. The core swaddle of diamond ribbons in fact retreats to the side, revealing a watch dial striped with two more ribbons of diamonds, all sitting atop a quartz movement. Price: $1.7 million. A simpler version, paired with a black-satin band, costs a modest $270,000.

Piaget's vintage cuff-watch was released this year, and happily so, since it is as elegant and eye-catching today as it was when similar designs first came out in the 1970s. In the version pictured above (right), a wide band of meshed rose-gold, looking like a cuff of rough cloth, is created by intricately weaving gold filament into a shimmering metallic broadcloth. A single cuff takes 50 hours to complete, and the man who originally designed this gold-weaving technique in the Piaget workshops has passed the torch to his daughter, who makes this modern version. In the example pictured, the watch dial is made of turquoise and costs $125,000.

Piaget's current chief executive, Philippe Léopold-Metzger, arrived at the house in 1999 and wisely asserted total control over the brand's production of movements; he wanted Piaget to roll out its own technical innovations. He has since worked hard at expanding the firm's portfolio with mechanical novelties, recalibrating Piaget's image so a robust line of men's watches can hold its own beside the brand's feminine and oversized Taylor-Kennedy mystique.

The ultrathin Altiplano is, for example, an elegant dress watch that slips easily under a man's shirt cuff, and grew, says Metzger, out of the house's aim to always make "technology serve design." The rose-gold Altiplano with alligator strap pictured on page 11 in particular caught our eye. It has a seconds subdial in the unusual 10 o'clock position, framed by a circle of modest-size diamonds embedded on the bezel; under the hood, coiled energy is stored in the hand-wound movement's 60-hour power reserve.

This 40-mm Altiplano first appears as a classic men's watch, almost interchangeable with something Patek-Philippe might produce. But the offbeat 10 o'clock position of the subdial counting down seconds instantly makes this watch memorable, and the circle of diamonds -- discreet enough not to make the piece either too feminine or the kind of spectacular bling a rapper might don -- makes the work pure Piaget. While perhaps still too rich for many American men, this is a genuinely luxurious watch, well priced at $28,000.

Perhaps more to American tastes is Piaget's line of tourbillon watches, the core technology a rotating cage that counters gravity and makes watches more accurate. Very unusual is Piaget's "Relatif" tourbillon, the cage rotating brazenly at the end of a minute hand. (For more, see our Piaget video.) But our favorite watch is the Piaget Emperador Coussin Perpetual Calendar, sometimes referred to as a "Black Tie" watch, pictured, above and to the left.

An 18K white-gold case is the chassis for 13.6 cts of baguette- and brilliant-cut diamonds, silvered counters, and an unusual black mother-of-pearl dial. The subdials embedded in this elegant black-and-white tableau reflect the nifty complications inside the watch, including a dual-time zone (for when you are traveling) and a hand that counts down the days of the week before snapping back to Monday's position and starting again.

But what's particularly stunning about this cushion-shaped watch is how all these silvery complications help create an image that harkens back to the best of Art Deco design, while also imbuing the work, through the fan-like subdials, with a slightly Japanese sensibility. Cost: $580,000.

Our critique of the brand? In the pursuit of ringing handsome returns for parent company Richemont, we find Piaget at times careens around a bit. The women's cases in its Fifth Avenue store include, for example, an entry-point $1,900 rose pendant and a number of diamond-studded hearts dangling on a chain. Piaget's $6,600 "Possession" watch on a silk band has a single diamond on the bezel.

It's always wise to have lower-priced baubles to get new customers hooked on a brand, but Piaget's originality seems lacking in these bland entry-level offerings. The Piaget hearts on necklace chains, no matter how high-quality, look little different from $129.99 Zales knick-knacks in a mall. Such products blur and diffuse the brand's image. Not sure why. As Apple has demonstrated, the best design-driven firms make sure their trademark style is readily apparent -- whatever the price point.